Diary | Marry Me Yoo AhIn!

I’ve pretty much knuckled off my watch list most all currently airing kdramas except for Master’s Sun. It is the start of the US tv season, after all. Busy times! Well, and I am just busier in real life, too. Yet, I have still been glued to Korean variety shows. To truly embrace the wacky sense of humor Koreans have, one must watch their variety shows. Dramas only reveal a fraction of their twisted humor. They are a work of art, these competition style reality shows, the goal often being to most deliberately and creatively inflict misery and humiliation upon their biggest stars. A-Listers want to be tortured this way, if you can believe it! Most recently, we had three Big Bang members mud-rollicking on Running Man, and I mean rolling, swimming, and cavorting around in a for realz outdoors swampy mud. This be no fancy spa treatment, this be squeezing mosquito poop out of your ears type of mud. In the same episode, we learn that Seungri can jump rope like a rabbit on steroids, and we get an eyeful of Mr. Perfect GD being absolutely adorable when revealed to be not so perfect at something—that ‘something’ being the ability to jump rope on a floating water mat. He has to have at least one flaw, I guess. ; )

If that isn’t Running Man fantastic enough, Yoo AhIn guests the following week!!! And he is so darn cute the whole time, and frankly, a pretty good sport considering...

“ AhIn-ie Goodbye~ ”

Costars for upcoming film Tough As Iron Kim HaeSook and Yoo AhIn get their variety on in this makjang rich-grandmother-inheritance themed episode. It’s official, my world is rocked. Yoo AhIn dunked, duped, and delicious. I fell in love a little bit more. Fashion King made me forget how much I loved you, and I wasn’t so crazy about Jang Ok Jang either...but this made me remember my undying devotion for you. Seriously, the range of emotions that crosses his face—fear, shock, disbelief, surprise, confusion—when his ejection chair malfunctions...I nearly died from laughter. While KwangSoo, his partner, goes flying into the air and crashes into the water behind him, Yoo AhIn sits there, all dry, looking at the empty space beside him in total confusion. Comedy gold!

And, by the end of the episode, we also learn that our handsome Yoo AhIn can cook. OMG, MARRY ME! To see the actor diligently and confidently giving orders on how to prepare their chosen dish and intently mixing his (I’m guessing) delicious marinade was to fall in love. OMG, MARRY ME!

Soooo...
Who missed Kang DongWon? I did! I did!
Who loves Kang DongWon? I do! I do!

src: mydaily

Hawt damn! I am salivating. He be a mysterious agent that goes by X. Shin MinAh be a sexy femme fatale named Mia. The film be called The X and it’s gonna be unveiled at the 2013 Busan International Film Festival next month. It’s some agent double cross action film, but honestly, I don’t care about the plot, I’m in! Jeon Woochi the Taoist Wizard was a plotless crazy fantastical exploration of Kang DongWon’s big screen charisma, and was fricken’ awesome despite its lack of logic, and one of my favorite K-films. OMG, HAVE AN AFFAIR WITH ME! (Since I already tagged Yoo AhIn for marriage)

Dramas and drama-ish show I talk about after the jump: WIN, Master’s Sun and Good Doctor.
  
WIN: Who Is Next

I do not know how, but WIN is still my favorite show to watch every week. I initially tuned in for Big Bang, but I stayed for the kiddies. My favorite non-drama drama, WIN: Who Is Next, continues to amuse, mostly because of the adorkable yet stylishly cool cast of young stars. The show is really edited well, sucks you right in. I’m completely smitten and loving Team A. What should I do? Please win this week’s battle, boys! And you know something is damn successful when it takes less than a second to find English subbed videos on YouTube because a fansub group has formed just to sub this one show. You can watch all the episodes subbed in English at WINNER SUBS. Here is a sample, some unreleased clips circulating online:

Team A and B chicken fighting:
src: WINNER SUBS

Team A’s talented leader Song MinHo:
src: YGWINNER1


Master’s Sun
Episode 13
“This is as far as I go,” lies HyoJin. Ah, if only that were true, but it does not seem like she’s stopping her pity party any time soon. And if we didn’t know it before, we know it now: the wonder of this show lies in the electric sizzle between HyoJin and JiSub. This episode pulls them apart for the hour and pulls the show askew with it. A little on the duller side and even more head scratching accompanies its plot progress. I find I have nothing much to say about this episode other than it didn’t really satisfy. HyoJin has walled herself off from JiSub, predictably, but we get another twist as well, wait for it—the amnesia twist. Grrrr. Even if it is a supernatural allergy, let’s call an elephant an elephant and not a rhino with a big nose. It’s amnesia if someone suffers memory loss after an accident. JiSub’s doctor might have mentioned to everyone that it is highly unusual for someone who does not have any kind of a head injury to lose his memory, unless JiSub’s brain and heart have switched spots. Which I guess in his case is an argument that can be made.

Plot Points & Why They Itch:

JiSub got stabbed and almost died, but InGuk, who has been tasked with the lord’s protection, seems oblivious to the danger his boss’s son is in and only concerns himself with the challenges of romancing a heartbroken HyoJin. Somewhat inconsistent with his so far very duty-motivated character. There’s a new gal in town sniffing around Lord JiSub, and just as our security guard stalked/spied on HyoJin, shouldn’t he be doing the same to Crazy Twin? I don’t enjoy that the characters we’ve grown to love seem to be spiraling down toward oblivious dumbness as they fall more in love.

On the ghostly front, HyoJin makes a deal with the Ghost Whispering Sunbae that popped up earlier in the series, Madam Twitchy Eyes. In exchange for some vaguely threatened indentured servitude, Madam Twitchy Eyes agrees to pull JiSub back from the dead. Fine, coma-land is not a place any of us have visited so who knows? It may very well be a dark room with a reading chair with ex-girlfriends hanging about? Many do believe waking up from a coma is all about the will to live so that plot move isn’t completely unexpected. What is less understandable is the catch that HyoJin must be eradicated from JiSub’s memory to come back. Say what? Why now? Because if he sees her…he’ll want to die again? Because she’s so bright? So confusing. And why is Madam Twitchy Eyes crying while doing her spirit-calling mojo?

In his Kingdom, Lord JiSub is alive and well, and profoundly confused by the steady trickle of clues that indicate that he was actually nice right before being screwdriver-ed. Our man’s back to being completely snarky and hilarious. I think we’re supposed to remember what an arse he was before HyoJin, but it only made me remember how hilarious he was instead. For the past few episodes, he definitely detoured from funny and went toward schizophrenic jerkism. Anyhow, he can read now, which makes him even more confused. He also keeps getting pangs of pain somewhere in the vicinity of his back where he was stabbed, but really, it is probably his heart aching even though his calculator brain can’t remember why. Humans are, if nothing else, blood and chemistry.

Big reveal: Secretary Kim is Crazy Living Twin’s uncle. Okay, maybe I am way off base here, but I am getting the whiff of a double twisty cross!? Is Living Twin actually JiSub’s dead ex-girlfriend? Which means the twin sister that had nothing to do with young JiSub died in that burning car? Which is so weird because didn’t the Dead Twin say she loved JiSub all the way back when she possessed HyoJin briefly? Hear me out: once upon a time in the past, Britain-raised and rich Hannah jetted off to Korea in search of long lost twin…somehow got involved in the kidnapping of her twin sister’s rich boyfriend…then Hannah died in the flaming car…and Cha HeeJoo returned to Britain pretending to be Hannah? This part is fact: Secretary Kim/Uncle Kim has been JiSub’s executive assistant since JiSub was at least 19 years old. Mind melting into puddle. And I don’t really think in a good way.

The more enjoyable part (one damn scene!) of this hour involve cutely lovelorn YooRi and stoic but handsome idiot InGuk (of course). They continue their sideways courtship and make me upset that they are on so little.

The aunt and uncle become more likable, the aunt because it is so clear she loves her nephew and the uncle because it is so clear he does too. He also seems to have a fondness for HyoJin as well, probably because HyoJin is essentially the same as him, a humble soul loving a rich, uptight number cruncher. Right, my personal favorite moment, the aunt slaps HyoJin. Saw that coming a mile away—from episode 1. I’m surprised she restrained herself for 13 episodes. Come on, HyoJin kind of had it coming. If only to slap some sense into her! I love her but the girl lacks an insane amount of common sense and self-love. I don’t like this direction. HyoJin should have stepped aside of her own volition, when she realizes the need to be an equal in love and not just a toy, and not becuz she is being manipulated by Madam Twitchy Eyes and Amnesia. Here’s hoping this week’s show returns to what made this show great in the first place: humor and flirt. (It is Wed so Ep14 has aired as I post this, but I have yet to watch it)


Good Doctor
I did finally checked out Good Doctor. I don’t know how I feel about the show. In 2008’s On Air, there was a drama being made within the drama, and the premise of that show within the show reminds me of this one. It wasn’t a medical drama, but Kim HaNeul played an actress taking on the challenging role of a young woman with a mental handicap. At the time, I remember thinking, what a strange drama scenario. Could this kind of a subject matter do well with audiences? Apparently, at least 5 years later anyway, the answer is in the positive ratings. In Good Doctor, we have a male lead that has a fairly severe form of autism and his mental stability is made all the more tenuous by echoes of several deeply felt childhood traumas. It’s a pretty intense show. Joo Won is very convincing and his depiction feels natural and thoughtfully done. It’s a pretty decent show overall, which I expected. The hospital politics seem wacky. The doctors all seem likable. The romance is weird, but not bad. However, I am not really able to get into it. Perhaps it’s a mood thing, more likely just a me thing. I’m not a big fan of episodic medical dramas.

One thing that I took away: Joo SangWook is one insanely handsome man. I thought so in Thorn Birds, and I think so again. Picture above—that silly guy in the background isn’t too shabby, either.

Hiatus
So this will most likely be my last post for a bit. My blog will be going into an unavoidable break. I would have loved to finish diary-talking about Master’s Sun until the very end and blog about Heirs as it starts, but I’ll be out of town for an extended bit of time. I may try to squeeze out one more post before going, hopefully. See you all in November!